Part 7

In dealing with sports and their cost, there is a principle which we must never lose sight of: Sports do not produce money or wealth. Their function is merely to distribute money or wealth when otherwise produced. Is the mode of distribution which we are considering a good one? It is certain that those who decided on expending their money in this manner were not actuated solely or chiefly by considerations of public utility; and considering how difficult it often is to determine what mode of expending a given sum will on the whole prove most beneficial to the public, the chance of our hitting on an almost perfect distribution, when we are looking at the whole subject from a totally different standpoint, seems rather remote. This undesigned coincidence may have taken place, but it is one which, in the circumstances, requires to be strictly proved. I assume that the majority of sportsmen are not fools or bad people. How would such men and women as they are have spent this money if the hunting-field had been closed against them? And would this new mode of spending it be better or worse for the public than the present one?

FACTS ABOUT THE GAME LAWS

BY J. CONNELL

“The Game Laws are the tribute paid by the over-worked and over-taxed people of England to the Lords of the Bread--to the predatory classes who have appropriated the land and depopulated the hills and valleys, to increase their own selfish pleasures. The destruction of the Game Laws is as inevitable in the long-run as was the destruction of Slavery, the repeal of the Corn Laws, the overthrow of an alien Church in the sister isle; but the fight will be a stiff one between the freemen of this country and our savage or only semi-civilised aristocracy and plutocracy.”--ROBERT BUCHANAN.

By the common law of England and Scotland, following that of Rome, wild animals in a state of nature are common to all mankind. A legal writer says: “By the very nature of the case wild animals cannot be made the subject of that absolute kind of ownership which is generally signified by the term _property_. The substantial basis of the law of property is physical possession, the actual power of dealing with things as we see fit, and we can have no such power over animals in a state of nature.”

It is, for instance, impossible to confine pheasants, partridges, grouse, etc., to a particular estate, and, taking fences as they are, the same may be said of the great majority of hares and deer in this country. Moreover, the individuals of each species are so much alike that it is impossible for anyone to identify them as his property. All legal writers without exception acknowledge that living wild creatures are not property. Nevertheless, the Game Laws were placed on the Statute Book to establish a proprietary right in those animals, and, as Mr. Barclay, Sheriff of Perthshire, once told a House of Commons Committee, they “put game, which was not property, in a higher scale than property.” They did this by means of a system of licences for killing and selling game, and by making trespass, which, in itself, is only a civil offence, a criminal offence of great magnitude.

At an early stage it was discovered that a free right of hunting was incompatible with the preservation of game in sufficient numbers to afford enough sport to the monarch and the nobles, and accordingly a series of laws known as the Forest Laws were enacted, by means of which certain districts were reserved for purposes of sport to the sovereign. The increase of population soon rendered protection necessary for areas outside the Royal Forests if the supply of game was to be kept up, and the result was a series of enactments known as the Game Laws. It will thus be seen that the right of taking wild animals, which originally belonged to the whole people, was filched from them by a selfish and privileged class, who, we need hardly add, stole the common lands, by means of “Enclosure Acts,” in much the same manner. It is strange but true that, except in Ireland, and in the north of Scotland, the people have come to acquiesce more readily in the robbery of the land than in the robbery of the game.

The Act which is considered the first or oldest of the Game Laws became law in the thirteenth year of Richard II., and it is interesting to observe the reasons for placing it on the Statute Book which the legislators of the time advanced. Said they:

“It is the practice of divers artificers, labourers, servants, and grooms to keep greyhounds and other dogs, and on the holidays when good Christian people be at church, hearing Divine service, they go hunting in parks, warrens, etc., of lords and others, to the very great destruction of the game.”

We know hundreds of districts, from Kent to Caithness, of which the same might be written to-day, thus showing that the Game Laws have utterly failed to obtain a moral sway over the people.

The term “game” includes hares, pheasants, partridges, grouse, black-game, ptarmigan, and bustards. In addition to these there are a number of animals to which one or other of the game statutes extends protection. These are rabbits, deer, roe, woodcock, snipe, quail, landrails, and wild duck. Although there is no property in wild animals, it has been settled by the Courts that the right to pursue or take game is a private privilege. In England this privilege belongs to the occupier of the soil, in the absence of any agreement to the contrary, and in Scotland to the owner. In the former country agreements reserving the game to the owner are almost universal. The occupier or the owner of the soil has the right to claim any game killed on his land; but such is the curious state of the law that the poacher who takes away what he kills is not guilty of theft.

The Game Laws are held in abhorrence by the majority of people, chiefly for two reasons: first, on account of their injurious economic effects, and, second, because of the harsh punishments which they inflict for trivial offences. By their action large tracts of land have been rendered almost totally unproductive, cultivation has been abandoned and immense numbers of labourers thrown out of employment; the crops of farmers near preserves, although often on a different estate, have been injured or even destroyed; ill-feeling has been engendered between the authors and the victims of game preserving, and not infrequently the landless, workless labourer has been driven to break the law in order to procure food, thus landing himself in violence, or even murder. In addition to all this, the irrepressible sporting appetite of the people, sustained by a consciousness of having moral right on its side, leads to a reckless love of breaking laws which are unjust, unfair, and injurious. No believer in democratic government, no lover of order, can uphold statutes which demoralise those who live under them.[9]

ADMINISTRATION OF THE GAME LAWS.

But bad as are the Game Laws in essence, the manner in which they are administered makes them far worse and more hateful. It is notorious that a large number of Justices of the Peace are game preservers. The people who break the Game Laws almost all belong to one class, the people who sit in judgment on them almost all belong to another and hostile class. The effect of this arrangement is made very clear by the following questions and answers:--

When Mr. J. S. Nowlson was asked by a Select Committee of the House of Commons, “Do game preservers ever act as magistrates in cases of offences against the Game Laws?” he replied, “Yes, but not in their own cases. For instance, if A has got a case B will take it, and if B has got a case A will take it.” Again, “In case a man was brought up for an offence against the Game Laws, and there was a certain amount of evidence given, do you think he would stand a greater chance of conviction than if it were an offence against some other law?” Reply: “We do consider so.”

Everybody acquainted with agricultural labourers is aware that a strong feeling prevails among them that justice is not to be expected in cases of offence against the Game Laws. A House of Commons Committee reported that “very few of the Game Law convictions are regular in point of form, and they would have to be set aside had they gone before the Judges.” It was a common occurrence for justices to sentence poachers to longer terms of imprisonment than the law allowed. For this and other reasons the Home Office has liberated a vastly greater proportion of offenders against the Game Laws than of any other class of offenders. An impartial observer might be excused for thinking that the penalties for poaching are high enough to satisfy the most exacting. For instance, the penalty for trespass in pursuit of game in the daytime is a fine of two pounds with imprisonment in default, and if the offence be committed by a party of five or more the penalty is five pounds each with imprisonment in default. In the case of night poaching, the penalty for a first offence is three months’ imprisonment with hard labour, and at the expiration of that period the offender is compelled to find sureties for his good behaviour for a year, or undergo a further imprisonment for six months with hard labour. For a second offence the penalty is six months’ imprisonment with hard labour, and at the end of that time the offender must find sureties for his good behaviour for two years or undergo a further twelve months’ imprisonment with hard labour. For a third offence the penalty is seven years’ penal servitude. But this is not all. If a party of three or more enter land at night for the purpose of taking game or rabbits, and if any of the party be armed with gun, crossbow, firearms, bludgeons, _or any offensive weapon_, each and everyone of such persons shall be liable to penal servitude for fourteen years.

Yet there are persons who think that those laws are not severe enough. A witness, for instance, before that Select Committee cheerfully proposed that poaching be made felony all round. It is needless to say that the harshness, or rather barbarity, of the punishment in store for them renders poachers but little inclined to yield themselves up when they find themselves confronted by gamekeepers. This accounts for much of the bloodshed of which we read in connection with poaching. It also accounts for much of the sympathy which is felt for poachers by all classes of the population except game preservers and their agents.

THE GAMEKEEPER.

Among the many unsatisfactory products of the Game Laws not the least objectionable is the gamekeeper. Mr. Joseph Arch once said: “Keepers are generally taken from the louting men one sees idling about.” The knowledge that their masters sit on the Bench of Justice, and that their evidence will be believed in preference to that of trespassers, frequently emboldens them to acts of the worst brutality. Some years ago, in charging a Grand Jury at the Nottingham Assizes on certain indictments for malicious wounding and murder, arising out of poaching affrays, Mr. Justice Vaughan Williams commented on the way in which these private police of individuals go out armed to the teeth, accompanied by savage dogs, _and without any code of instructions to regulate their proceedings_. Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, referring to arrests, etc., said: “I believe myself that in three cases out of four, the gamekeepers act illegally.” Whatever the men may have been originally, it is certain that their method of living demoralises the great majority of keepers. They are often selected at first because of their brutality. A humane man would be useless in such a post. Head-keepers, who are generally well paid, as a rule act honestly by their employers, but it is a fact known to the writer that the more poorly paid ones not only take game for their own use, but frequently sell it in order to provide themselves with drink. In almost every district in which game is preserved it is well known to the working people that the keepers will purchase, on behalf of their masters, eggs which they know to have been stolen.

In August, 1900, a show of gamekeepers’ dogs was held at the Royal Aquarium, London. We quote from a London paper:

“I would rather have one of these dogs with me in a night row than three men,” said Mr. W. Burton to a representative yesterday. He was gazing fondly at five ferocious-looking bull mastiffs in the Westminster Aquarium, where a show of gamekeepers’ dogs is being held. “If they were unmuzzled,” he added, “one alone could tear a strong man to pieces in five minutes. At Thorneywood Kennels, Nottingham, I have trained these dogs to help the gamekeeper in catching night poachers, and although they are kept muzzled a man has no chance with them. If he attempts to run away he is knocked down instantly and kept a prisoner until the keeper arrives. They are the same breed of dogs that were used for bull-baiting in the last century.”

With long imprisonment, or even penal servitude staring him in the face, and the prospect of immediate violence from man, or dog, or both, it is not to be wondered at that the poacher often turns out “a rough handful.” All will remember Kingsley’s lines:

“There’s blood on your new foreign shrubs, squire, There’s blood on your pointer’s feet; There’s blood on the game you sell, squire, And there’s blood on the game you eat.”

It is probably not too much to say that hundreds of encounters between poachers and gamekeepers occur every winter in this country. Except in cases where life is lost, the London papers do not report them, and even then they do not always do so. Local papers, published in districts where game is preserved, are the sheets to search for such records.

It may be mentioned here that in the neighbourhood of London gamekeepers are much less aggressive and brutal than in remote districts. Near London they seldom attempt to arrest poachers. Acting under orders, presumably, they content themselves with following poachers and identifying them if possible, for the purpose of summoning them afterwards. Moreover, the punishment meted out to poachers in the neighbourhood of the Metropolis is much lighter, as a rule, than in the provinces. This is believed on all hands to be due to the criticism and denunciation of harsh sentences by _Reynolds’s Newspaper_ and other Radical organs. Such is the effect of this criticism that some years ago, after the occurrence of some bloody affrays, orders were given on some estates near Croydon, that in future poachers were to be simply ordered off the land, and were not even to be summoned unless they resorted to violence. These orders were afterwards withdrawn, but the fact that they were given shows that game-preservers are fearful of losing their privileges if public attention is directed to them.

In reading reports of poaching affrays it is well to remember that it is almost invariably the gamekeeper’s side of the case that is presented to the public. If the poacher escapes, he of course is never heard from. Even if he be caught he is seldom believed, and his description of the encounter seldom reported. There are exceptions to every rule, but it is the sincere belief of the present writer that, when they find themselves confronted by keepers, the vast majority of poachers would go away quietly if allowed. The abolition of the power of arrest would, therefore, be a long step in the direction of peace. The poacher, whether he poach for food or for sport, never believes that he is guilty of a moral crime. For this reason, the gamekeeper will never command the respect which is almost invariably accorded the policeman, even by the most hardened criminals. Policemen, as a rule, are humane in their treatment of prisoners, and chiefly because they do not suffer from any sense of personal wrong. With gamekeepers the case is widely different. From the depredations of the poacher they suffer, or think they may suffer, in repute or convenience, or even in pocket. In the circumstances it is little wonder that they frequently act brutally. As there are exceptions to all rules, there are, of course, exceptional magistrates who occasionally let light in on the dark ways of game-preserving. The following paragraph, culled from the _Airdrie Advertiser_ of March 5, 1898, reveals a case in point:

“CHARGE AGAINST GAMEKEEPERS.--On Thursday, before Sheriff Mair, at Airdrie, Robert Connor M’Guire, steelworker, 14, Watt Street, Mossend, pleaded guilty to a charge of daylight poaching. He was fined 31s., including expenses. Accused complained to the Sheriff that he had been assaulted by the two gamekeepers, and that he still bore marks of their violence upon his arms, which he was desirous of showing. The gamekeepers were called in and appeared to treat the accusation lightly, one of them remarking that ‘it was immaterial to him.’ The Sheriff sent for the Inspector of Police, whom he directed to take the gamekeepers into custody and M’Guire to make the charge of assault against them.”

We may here mention that all appointments of gamekeepers are invalid unless registered with the Clerk of the Peace. Very many of them are not so registered, and, therefore, their arrests, and attempted arrests, of poachers are illegal. The truth is that on many preserves nearly all the young labourers are keepers’ assistants. Many of them are desirous of getting appointed as keepers so as to escape from hard work, and these are often anxious to distinguish themselves by brutal conduct towards not only poachers, but the most harmless trespassers.

THE POACHER.

And what sort of man is he against whom all this machinery of law and authority and brutality is directed? We refer to the poacher. There is probably no better-abused individual on earth; but abuse is not argument, and still less is it evidence. If the reader will turn to the report of the Select Committee of 1846, he will see that after carefully sifting the evidence the conclusions arrived at were: (1) That the poacher was generally far superior to the average agricultural labourer in intelligence and activity; (2) that the great majority of poachers would break no law other than the Game Laws; (3) that the poacher was not regarded as a criminal, either by himself or the people amongst whom he lived; and (4) that this opinion was shared even by the game-preserver, who not infrequently offered him employment as gamekeeper. The reader may not be aware that many poachers become keepers. The well-known writer, “Stonehenge,” remarks on this:

“Reformed poachers, if really reformed, make the best keepers, but it is only when worn out as poachers that they think of turning round and becoming keepers.”

It is worthy of remark that every writer on sport of any ability (as far as we are aware) feels himself constrained to say a good word of the poacher. We have just now at our elbow a well-known and standard work, entitled “The Moor and the Loch,” by John Colquhoun. Writing of poachers in bulk (so to speak) the author denounces them in unmeasured terms, but when he comes to speak of individual poachers whom he had known, his tone is altogether different. We quote from vol. ii., p. 146:

“When I first knew Gregor More, of Callander, his poaching days were over, for he had a mortal disease from having lain out in the fields one cold night. He still managed to saunter down the river and give those beautiful sweeps with his line and salmon fly which were the admiration of the whole clachan.… I looked at him with some curiosity; a nobler specimen of manhood I never beheld. Upwards of six feet high, of the finest herculean proportions, and straight as an arrow, he seemed equally formed for activity and strength. There was nothing mean or sneaking about his manner. His face was open and manly, and, despite the sad discipline to which he had exposed both mind and body, he had not effaced the natural and sure marks of force and truth from his countenance. Although wan and emaciated, there was a coolness, a will to dare in his eye, backed by his tremendous shoulders and still powerful frame, so that I could not look at him without thinking of the words, ‘Majestic though in ruins.’

“Very unlike Gregor More was ----. Strange to say, he had once been a placed minister of the Kirk (answering to a beneficed clergyman), and although he often returned late on the Saturday night, after being all the week poaching the deer, his sermons were both clever and popular. I met him once when traversing a wild range of hills, and was impressed both with his general information and the courtesy of his address.”

SOME RESULTS OF GAME-PRESERVING.

Among the evils incidental to game-preserving, not the least is the destruction of rare and beautiful birds and beasts. I remember how there was on exhibition in the window of a Liverpool taxidermist a splendid specimen of the golden eagle, measuring 7 feet 2 inches from tip to tip of the wings, and 3 feet 2 inches from beak to tail. It had built its eyrie in a small cave in the face of a high cliff at Benula Forest, Glencannich, Beauly, N.B. It was watched by a keeper, who descended the face of the cliff after dark, killed the mother bird, and carried away the only eaglet from the nest.

In most preserves steel traps are set for the purpose of catching birds or beasts of prey. When they are caught they are often allowed to linger in agony for hours, or even days before being despatched. The writer has seen dozens of hares which had each lost a leg in these traps. When a fox is caught in this manner it will often gnaw the leg off.

The horrors of the battue have been described and denounced so often that little need be said about it here. It is simple butchery, often very clumsily performed. For days after a battue hares may be seen with broken backs, dragging their hind-quarters after them among the bushes, and pheasants may be seen running about with broken wings trailing the ground. Pigeon-shooting from traps is justly condemned, but the evils attending it are small compared with those inseparable from the battue. Mr. Frederick Gale, in “Modern English Sports,” says: “At the Gun Club Grounds and similar places, which are frequented by noblemen and gentlemen, the cruelty is comparatively _nil_ to that occasioned by the battue.” It is within our knowledge that the battue is condemned even by gamekeepers. They cannot be expected to speak their minds freely before their employers, but if questioned privately many will be found to condemn it as affording no test of marksmanship, no opportunity for exercise or excitement, and as being wasteful of the game. The animals that escape wounded often become emaciated, or even die of hunger before being found.

The game preservers are never tired of arguing that the preservation of game increases the food-supply of the people. To this there are two answers, either of which is crushing. In the first place, with the exception of rabbits, game is scarcely ever touched by the masses, for the very good reason that its price is far beyond their ability to pay. In the second place, that which they do buy occasionally, rabbit, in order to come within their reach has to be sold at a price far below its cost of production. This is equivalent to saying that the same amount of time, energy, capital, etc., employed in the production of any other sort of food, would increase the food-supply to a much greater extent.